I feel that I have grown to enjoy writing more mainly because of the paper topics. I had a lot more freedom with them than I have had in a long time so it was very refreshing. It has stopped feeling like a chore. My first few essays had so many mechanical errors and some organizational errors. For the most part, I have grown and have been able to identify and correct them. I have grown more aware of them and realize when I begin ranting on about unrelated topics. I also feel very refreshed and feel like I know how to draft a strong thesis for the most part. So many of the short powerpoints in class have taught me several things such as thesis statements can be longer than 1 sentence, there are other rhetorical appeals than just the well known three, how to fix run-on sentences, and so on. I remember touching on those topics in high school but the difference was that those teachers overcomplicated them way more than they needed to be and that you got right to the point. I still feel that I have plenty of room to improve as there is always room for improvement. I think that I have cleaned up my organization for the most part but there are still times where I am unaware of it and need someone else to point it out to me (during peer review for example). I am also planning on drafting my own outlines before I start writing my future rough drafts because I tend to go blank and the outlines help me gather my thoughts. I think the most challenging part of this class was figuring out how to go about/start off my essays. I am not used to so much freedom being given to me when writing essays so I always feel so lost at the beginning of it, however, I am getting the hang of it. Making outlines and lists help me a lot. In this course, I have learned how to properly cite sources. This will be applicable to my English 104 class next semester, and any other classes that I take during my next 4 years where I have to find sources. No matter what, people always need to be given credit when their work is being used so this skill can actually help me for the rest of my life when that is necessary. My advice for incoming freshman about English 103: ALWAYS use your planner (do not fall behind- once you get into a nice routine it becomes second nature to stay on top of everything), do the extra credit whenever it is given (even if you have a “good” grade- you never know when you will need those extra points to fall back on), no matter how tired/busy you are, always go to class (only skip if you REALLY have to- attendance counts in the end and it is easier to stay in the loop, plus it is only 50 minutes which is crazy short and doable compared to other classes), ask questions when you need help, work hard/take notes in class (makes everything easier), and have fun with your blog posts since you will have them assigned to you almost every day of class. To wrap things up, English 103 was a nice growing experience for me and was a nice, smooth transition from high school English to college-level English. I actually enjoyed the blog posts for the most part. They were a nice break from some of my extremely fast-paced classes. I also had a lot of fun having more freedom with most of the paper topics!

Reflect on this paper. What was difficult? What was easy? Was anything actually a little fun? What was definitely NOT fun?

 

As usual, it was difficult for me to get out everything I wanted to say. I always have so many ideas and then I go blank when typing out the essay. Working on an outline before typing out the rough draft helped me a little bit with this issue, but no matter what I always have a tough time gathering my thoughts. Developing a clear, organized structure was a little easier for this essay. I worked hard on my last essay trying to correct that, and  making sure I had an organized outline helped me stay on track. I tried myself to not have way too many ideas going at once in one single paragraph. I tried to break things up as much as possible. This essay was pretty fun for the most part because I typed about something that I was pretty passionate about. This is actually a pretty big problem in my life at the moment, and I know it is for a lot of other people too (especially people in my building). Next semester hopefully should not be too big of an issue since I learned my lesson this semester, and now have no night classes next semester (obviously I have study sessions and other things that might cause me some problems). I hope to see this issue fixed in the future. One thing that I did not have fun with was the works cited paged. No matter how many times I try to learn how to properly cite my sources, I get tripped up. I have used my notes I have taken during class, and have used Purdue Owl to help me but I always end up messing it up and getting confused.

United States, Department of Agriculture. “Making Healthy Food Choices.” OneSearch/CardCat. University of  Minnesota Government Publications Library, January 12, 1999. www.babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951d018093103;view=1up;seq=1Accessed: November 28, 2018.

Wilson, Daniel. “Mindfulness, personality, and disordered eating.” OneSearch/CardCat. December 2017.  www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886917304221Accessed:   November 30, 2018.

 

(I am aware that these will need a hanging indent and 2 sources are on their way to being integrated)

These sources both come from the library’s webpage. For source 1, I plan to take direct quotes from the online book and use those to help with some of my major points, plus the counterargument (how people can easily get food from the little mini mart area in the dining hall- serves only junk food/candy and microwave foods). For source 2 I plan to pull a few quotes from that text as well for my argument. I want to use the methods of summary and paraphrase for this source mainly since I do not want my whole paper to just be direct quotes. I would like to include possibly 2 more sources- these being quotes or paraphrases coming from 2 different people that I would like to interview. I feel like I may want to interview a worker in the dining hall and somebody who lives in Woodworth that tries to eat at Woodworth. I would like to start off with my strongest points, but I want to make sure my essay still ends on a strong, intriguing note. I will use put my counterargument more towards the end of the essay with the healthy food source and mention a quote from someone’s stance that works in the Woodworth dining hall. The rest of my sources will be integrated beforehand.

I am going to make everything as organized as I possibly can. I am going to first make a list of major points I know I am going to want to include in my paper. I am also going to finish up any searching for any final sources I want to include. Along with that, I might stop downstairs in the actual dining hall and make any observations and take notes of things that may be vital to the argument. Visiting the dining hall and taking notes on it would help me with developing a possible strong thesis and help me think of counterarguments. I might talk to a few workers downstairs about the rules, their opinions, and anything I think I should know. Once I have a lot of main ideas picked out, I am going to create my outline for the essay. I might create a few rough drafts until I am satisfied with just one. I think I am also going to begin a bit of my rough draft to try to get ahead but once I meet with my peers for the workshop on Friday, I will take into account their feedback, and make any necessary changes in my essay.

Due to the inconvenient dining hall hours in Ball State University’s dormitories, the dining halls should remain open an hour later than what they usually are.

I think that Ball State’s staff and the school itself would have a lot of opposing arguments for my idea. I think the main issue they will bring up is money and employees. Students are only allowed to work a maximum of 20 hours a week when they are employed by Ball State. Obviously, a concern they will have is if they keep the dining hall open an hour or 2 later, they might struggle to have students work. The students might already have 20 hours into their schedule and might not be able to work that extra hour. I have seen numerous grown adults working in the dining hall. All of the cashiers are adults, not students, and half of the servers are grown adults. I would bring up that point and how they could have adults stay that one or 2 extra hours. Or, implement to the new rule of having the dining hall stay open later at the start of next semester. This semester is almost over so next semester when it is a fresh start, the new time will be added and make all of the workers aware of it so they can be prepared. Also, when hiring new employees, make them aware of these possible times they could be working. Another issue they may bring up would be money. They might say that there is not enough money to pay employees to work an extra hour or 2. I would bring up how it would be shocking or look bad that money is more important to the school than their student’s health.

For my topic I want to talk about the dining hall within my dorm building. Woodworth’s dining hall is a hot spot for people all around campus. I live in a living learning community where myself and a majority of these students have late hours. Whether it is night class and labs, student lead study sessions, spending hours at bracken, etc, people are bound to get “home” at late hours. When I come home at 8 on the dot or a little later than that, all of the food in the dining hall is packed up and closed. It closes at 8pm. Back at home, some families don’t even eat until 8 pm. They prefer to dine at later hours in the night just like how some people prefer to have dinner as early as 4pm. They have a mini mart that stays open until midnight but all of that is packaged, frozen, candy, and unhealthy options. I want to do my topic on getting the dining hall to stay open later. I think 10 is a good time for when everything should be closing up. This topic is important to me because I am constantly missing dinner almost on the daily because the dining hall closes too early (in mine and many other people I’ve talked to opinions). I already only have 10 meals swipes a week, the lowest amount you can go, so when I am having to miss meals and am already struggling trying to pick which days I want only 1 meal per day, it gets frustrating. I would like to see this problem get fixed.

free write:
For my free write the other day in class, I wrote about my residence hall. It is a community that I will belong to for this entire school year. I live in the Woodworth Complex. Within this community there are definitely a few issues that need to be taken care of. Just a few are along the lines of bad odors throughout the halls, the noise level is very bad, the bathrooms have issues, etc. One that really bothers me is the dining hall within the complex. The lines in the dining hall are insanely long. They are so long that it is not worth even going there. Between waiting in different lines for food and the checkout lines ( for some reason half the time there is only 1 or 2 checkouts open out of the 5 ) it is a lengthy process trying to grab lunch during a small time frame in between classes before I head off to 2 hour long labs. I should be able to just head downstairs, grab a quick lunch to go, and head out. I should not have to walk to the atrium, or Noyer when my dining hall is just downstairs and is supposed to be convenient. I pay to living in this dorm and should be able to easily get food there and not have to skip/miss out on meals because I have no time to waste in these extremely long lines. As crazy as it sounds, my dining hall adds a lot of stress into my day, especially when I have a limited number of swipes to buy food and can’t even use that. One more issue with this dining hall is that it needs to be open later than 8. We live in a living learning community where almost all of us are health majors whose nights are spent in long night labs, study sessions, testing, etc. I can’t even begin to count how many times that I have gotten too late to the dining hall by a few minutes and everything is packed up for the night. Obviously, the mini mart in there is open until midnight but that is mainly candy and microwave items, not actual meals. I would suggest keeping the dining hall open later. I would love for the lines to fixed in the dining hall but that may be too hard to change.

This essay was somewhat easy but also somewhat hard. It was easy to do the inventory and come up with what I wanted to analyze because I chose such a good advertisement. The hard part was putting everything into words on paper. I knew exactly what I wanted to say and to analyze but struggled with putting it all together. This essay was quite fun overall. I am very passionate about animal’s rights and anything to do with animals so this advertisement really caught my eye. I enjoyed looking at secondary sources and learning about facts on a topic that I am interested in. Trying to talk about the rhetorical appeals was a pain because I knew for a fact that ethos ad pathos were utilized but I had a tough time trying to figure out the logos. I came to the conclusion that there was not enough that dealt with logos for me to discuss it in a whole paragraph of my essay. Throughout this process I developed a clearer understanding of rhetorical appeals, rhetorical elements, facts about animals in circuses, and practiced embedding secondary sources into my argument. I can put my critical thinking to use in the future when I am writing arguments, giving speeches for speech class, and even using it in my profession when it comes to decision making. I have learned a lot through this essay, and know that there is still room for growth.

Pathos plays a huge role in this ad. The demeanor and facial expression of the tiger triggers a few emotions for the audience. The tiger’s partly open mouth as if it is crying for help, and its eyes gazing off into the distance lets the viewers know that it is in distress. Knowing and seeing this triggers sadness/causes the audience to be upset. The tiger’s stance as if it is struggling and the white puppet strings also cause the viewer to feel angry and sympathetic for the tiger. Generally, people love animals and hate to see them upset in any way, so naturally this ad will cause the viewers to feel bad for the tiger. The dark background color is also setting a sad/gloomy tone for the image. This element will obviously enhance those emotions of anger and sadness. The appeal to value and need are also utilized within this ad. Several people value animal’s safety and rights just as much as they do for a person. The tiger being treated as a prop is going to stir a fire in the viewer and will make them want to support the animal-free circus obviously. A lot of people also feel the need to protect and stand up for animals, so this ad will also persuade the viewer to step up and possibly convince others to support this type of circus due to the animal potentially being harmed in the photo. Ethos is also at play in this ad. It is dealing with people’s ethics. Obviously, a great deal of people can tell that a tiger being used as prop is considered “bad” behavior. It is not ethically correct. Logos is kind of at play too. The ad is showing that if people go to animal circuses/support them, animals (such as tigers) are going to be used as a prop/puppet, and they are going to be in distress.